Weird, Like Eureka Weird
by Partly
Summary: Jack Carter thought he left weird back in Eureka.


Jack Carter was used to weird. After all Eureka and weird went together like thunder and lightning – where there was one, there was the other. But he wasn't in Eureka, he wasn't even Inear/i Eureka. He was on vacation and he had really been hoping that he'd left "weird" back on his work desk.

No such luck.

The bank lobby was in chaos. The vault door lay in slag, still glowing with a blue-orange light. The smaller individual doors on the safety deposit boxes were quickly, methodically following suit. The boxes behind those doors were being pulled out and emptied into waiting bags. Normally, this would have qualified as merely odd on Jack's "Eureka Scale of Strange". What made it weird was the fact that all this seemed to be happening by itself. There were no people to be seen. The air just erupted into crackling blue-orange flame and the safe melted. Then the boxes floated serenely over to the bags that appeared out of thin air. Which is where they returned once they were full.

Jack cursed himself for not bringing a gun along. But then, in his experience guns weren't always the best response to weird. As if in answer to his thought, the bank guard suddenly rounded the corner, gun drawn and skidded to a stop in front of the melted vault door. He gaped at it for a second then waved his gun in the general direction of the floating safety deposit boxes. "Don't move!" he finally squeaked out.

Before he finished his order, he was flying backwards. He hit the floor halfway across the lobby, then slid the rest of the way to the back wall, hitting it with a solid thunk. The lobby echoed with screams. It was as if the attack on the guard had freed everyone from the spell that held them and everyone ran for the glass doors that led out to the street.

Jack stared at the spot were the guard had stood. There was a ripple in the air, a slight distortion that moved back toward the vault. "An invisibility cloak," he muttered to himself. He knew that he'd worked too long in Eureka when somewhere, in the back of his head, he heard a chorus of voices complaining about his choice of names. As if it mattered. The only thing that mattered was that he couldn't fight what he could see.

He looked around and spotted a row of copiers behind the teller's windows. Jack sprinted through the "Employee's only" partition and headed for the closest machine. He jerked open the front panel and scanned the insides. The bag for the black toner sat on the top and Jack pulled it out, leaving a stream of sticky black powder behind. He rushed back to the vault.

A new green light flashed in the vault and there were shouts of anger. There was a snapping, electrical sound and a figure suddenly flew out of the vault. Well, actually a figure suddenly appeared in midair flying away from the vault. He didn't move when he hit the floor. The snapping sound repeated and Jack could hear the sound of something large and fleshy hitting the safe wall, followed by a long, moaning groan.

Jack hadn't a clue what was happening and before he could figure it out, the simmering distortion that he saw earlier moved out of the vault and darted along the wall.

Jack ripped a larger opening in the toner bag he held and gave it a flick, spreading the black dust out in a wide arc. It revealed two figures sprinting toward the side door. Jack dove at the feet of the first one, knocking him sprawling. A quick forearm to the face knocked the fight out of his opponent. Jack paused long enough to realize that the "invisibility cloak" was really an "invisibility helmet" before he turned to stop the second man, who was leaving a trail of toner as he sprinted to the door.

He shouldn't have bothered. The world was filled with a buzzing, snapping green light and the fleeing thief was suddenly flying across the room, impacting with a polished wood table. Jack blinked, trying to clear the dancing black dots from his eyes.

"Are you all right?"

Jack stared blearily up into the face of a middle-aged man with graying black hair and van dyke beard. He wore modified aviator glasses and carried a pistol that Jack was sure belonged locked up somewhere in the bowels of Global Dynamics. "Ah, I don't know." It was an honest answer at least.

The man smiled at him and stashed the pistol somewhere in the oversized leather overcoat he wore. Then he held a hand out to Jack. "Nice work with the…" he waved his hand in the general direction of the black powder that covered everything in the area. "It's hard to zap them when you can't see them."

Jack grabbed the hand and allowed the stranger to help him up. "That's, ah, that's what I thought," Jack said. "Well, minus the zap part." He studied the man more closely. Jack was sure he'd never seen him before but this level of weird had to be related the Eureka, right? "Jack Carter," he offered.

The man was already looking away. "Artie." He unhelpfully provided. Sirens could be heard in the background. Artie looked around. "We've got to get this taken care of in a hurry." He reached back into his coat and this time pulled out a square metal box that he opened up and spoke into. "Yeah, we need a clean up and intervention at the First National Bank. Run interference with the locals."

Jack was beginning to feel a little out of his depth. It was a depressingly familiar feeling. "Run interference?"

Artie turned back to him. "Yeah. Just long enough for us to get out." He studied Jack. "Jack Carter, huh? You're the man over at Eureka." He nodded. "We've looked into you."

"What?" Definitely out of his depth. "Who are you, exactly?"

The side door opened and two figures rushed in.

"Sorry we're late, Artie," the first one, a tall man in a suit, said. "Myka got us lost."

"Me?" The second person, a young woman, also dressed in a suit and somehow slightly more imposing despite her shorter stature. "You were driving."

"Exactly. And you were navigator. Getting lost is always the navigator's fault."

"Enough." Artie's voice cut through the argument. "Pete, grab their helmets and get the Molecular Destabilizer. Myka, erase the camera footage."

The two sprung into action and Artie turned back to Jack. "Thanks for your help, I don't think I could have stopped both of them without you."

"You're welcome?" Exactly how much "looking into" did this man do?

"And I'm really sorry for leaving you in this tight spot, but I know I can trust you not to talk about this," he paused and again waved his hand vaguely around the lobby. "Unless you want us to modify your memory?"

"No." Jack took a step back. "Totally unnecessary." He'd had enough of that, thank you very much.

"Good."

Myka and Pete returned to Artie's side. "Got it all," Pete said. "Now what?" He looked pointedly at Jack.

"Now we go," Artie answered. The sirens were just outside the door. The other two hesitated until Artie's stern "Go. Now."

"Nice working with you, Jack," Artie said, following the others toward the door. "I'll let Global Dynamics know how helpful you were." Then they were gone, leaving Jack alone in the bank with four unconscious thieves and one bank guard. A second later the police busted through the front door.

Jack sighed. This definitely qualified as weird.


End file.
